Acrophobia
by CalmBeforeAStorm
Summary: Post-Reichenbach. After witnessing Sherlock throw himself off of the roof of St Bart's, John is left to deal with a fear he hadn't suffered from before...Angst!


Disclaimer: BBC'S Sherlock does not belong to me.

n;

acrophobia: fear of heights, an irrational fear of being in high places

- adj., acrophobic.

Fear was a funny thing, John Watson had decided.

When he was a younger, and before he had decided that a career in the British Army Medical Corps was the one for him, John had held a brief, yet enjoyable fascination with human phobias.

He knew all of their names, even the most obscure and ridiculous ones ( alektorophobia: fear of chickens, : fear of long words ), and had even once entertained the thought of becoming a psychologist so he could study them in as much detail as he wanted.

In Afghanistan he had learned about fear, far more than he had ever wanted to. The fear there was different.

Sure, there was always a soldier here and there who squealed at the sight of one of the large camel spiders that scuttled across the desert sands, or an officer who paled and shook at the first sight of rumbling, dark clouds gathering on the horizon.

Those phobias were nothing. They were irrational, silly, irrelevant. They were a source of hilarity for the weary soldiers, who tended to (guiltily) appreciate the amusing sight of one of their senior officers dancing around and flicking madly at imaginary insects.

John did not consider himself to be afraid of anything. Surprising, really, considering his obsession with phobias.

But in Afghanistan, John had felt fear. The same fear that everyone else had felt, the fear he quickly became familiar with seeing in his friends' and comrades' eyes amidst the sound of shells and the deafening, never-ending blast of gunfire.

He had feared death.

He wasn't ashamed of it. It was a perfectly logical, understandable fear to have in his situation, even a noble fear, in a way. And he had accepted it, learned to deal with it as best as he could. He was a doctor first and foremost, a soldier second. If one of his men were hit by a sniper's bullet, left to bleed out in the sand, John would run to help him. He always did, even as the fear of the Taliban, and what could happen at any moment, sent his heart racing and made his legs weak.

After John was shot, doing exactly that, he had realised how rational that fear had been.

When he returned home to England, John hadn't cared about phobias anymore.

Until now, that is.

Being a former phobia-geek, John knew that there are a few fears that are instinctive to all human beings, built in to their systems as a result of their distant ancestors' fight for survival.

People were born with them. Two of these fears stood out: the fear of loud noises, and the fear of falling from heights.

Acrophobia.

That was the word he had remembered after a long while of flicking through his old psychology books, preparing to throw some of them out.

It was a word John was having trouble applying to himself.

He was acrophobic now, he realised. All thanks to…. a certain event that had occurred a few months ago, which John still didn't like to think about.

Well, he supposed, not exactly acrophobic. His fear wasn't exclusively of being in high places, or falling from great heights.

John could barely even stand to look up at a tall building anymore. Whenever he did, it brought back memories that were still too fresh. He would remember standing at the foot of a different tall building, staring up at his best friend as Sherlock threw himself off.

He avoided St Bart's completely. The last time he had been there, he had been sitting in a blank, sterile room, with his friend's lifeless, bloody body lying in the room next door.

John had heard about the cards, the flowers, the heart-felt messages from their fans left outside the hospital, even the graffiti proclaiming Sherlock's innocence that now adorned the walls of the building.

And yet, John couldn't bring himself to go to see them in person, even though he was saddened at the thought of never seeing the proof that some people still believed in the great detective in the funny hat.

It wasn't the fear of falling himself that made John go weak at the knees and feel light-headed. Rather, it was the thoughts that the sight of a sheer drop brought, unbidden, to his mind.

How Sherlock must have felt, standing at the edge of that rooftop. Had he been frightened? Had his pulse quickened as he had looked down at the pavement below? And worse still: had his stomach lurched, the way John's now did, as he had thrown himself off the edge towards his death?

When John stood at any high place, whether it was on the top of a hill, on a balcony, or even looking down from the second floor of a shopping centre, he found himself imagining Sherlock's last moments, experiencing the emotions that must have rushed through his friend's great brain, before it had been shut down forever.

If he was hit with sudden vertigo at the top of a flight of stairs, or while looking out of the flat's window to the London street below, it wasn't John's body that he imagined was falling.

In those moments, John _was _Sherlock, plummeting gracefully, the pavement rushing up to meet him at a frighteningly fast rate.

Harry had taken him to Paris a couple of months ago, perhaps hoping to shake him out of the grief-induced stupor he had fallen into after Sherlock's suicide.

John hadn't been to Paris before, and actually found that he enjoyed the trip. The city was beautiful, the food wonderful, Harry was sober (for once), and John had almost forgotten everything which had led to this. They took the Bateau Mouches down the Seine, visited the Louvre, Notre Dame, Versailles, and John had enjoyed it all.

He had been having such a good time that, when they had spotted the Eiffel Tower and Harry had asked, rather hesitantly, whether he wanted to climb up it, he had answered _sure, why not?_

John barely made it up the first flight of stairs (he had insisted on the exercise), before the sense of uneasiness began to creep over him.

He had almost managed to reach the first level before it had gotten too much.

One mistake of looking over the edge to the ground below sent his breath in short, shallow gasps, seeing, in his mind's eye, an entirely different scene below him.

Red buses, black cabs, red phone boxes, Londoners milling about on the street below. One man standing a little further off, his phone pressed anxiously to his left ear, talking desperately, yet hopelessly as he stared with anguish up at the rooftop….

Harry had managed to prop him upright as he had swayed suddenly, then had pulled him quickly back down the stairs to the ground. John had cried into her shoulder unabashedly for the next thirty minutes.

They had flown back to London the next day.

John remembered how he and Sherlock had leapt carelessly over rooftops and alleyways on their mad midnight dashes across London. Heights hadn't bothered him then, and they certainly hadn't seemed to bother Sherlock.

John couldn't picture himself doing that now, couldn't even fathom how he had ever managed to do it.

Had Sherlock ever wondered, as he leapt easily onto another building, if he would one day end up lying sprawled and broken on the ground below?

Probably not, John thought. Normal, mundane things like personal safety, or even death wouldn't ever have crossed Sherlock's brilliant mind.

Silly fears like acrophobia probably hadn't either.

What would Sherlock have thought of John's irrational feelings?

Sherlock had committed suicide from the roof of St Bart's in front of John's very eyes, and now, John was left behind with a fear that hadn't existed for him before.

The doctor was pretty sure he would be like this for the rest of his life.

Strangely enough, he couldn't bring himself to hate Sherlock for it, far from it. He missed the great detective far too much for that.

Instead, John hated high places.

He despised heights, loathed them even, all because they had managed to do the one (in John's mind, at least) impossible thing in the world.

Heights had killed Sherlock Holmes.

A/N: Ok, hope somebody out there actually enjoys this… Does anyone else find it ironic that the word for a phobia of long words is, like, eleven syllables long? :D


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